Question

The table below shows the number of cars Jing sold each month last year. What is the median of the data in the table?

Month	Number of cars sold
January	\[25\]
February	\[15\]
March	\[22\]
April	\[19\]
May	\[16\]
June	\[13\]
July	\[19\]
August	\[25\]
September	\[26\]
October	\[27\]
November	\[28\]
December	\[29\]

A). \[13\]
B). \[16\]
C). \[19\]
D). \[20.5\]
E). \[23.5\]

Answer 1

Hint: Here, in the question, we are given the data of cars sold in each month of the last year. And we are asked to find the median of the data. We will first understand the meaning of median, formula of calculating median and then continue to solve to get the desired result.

Complete step-by-step solution:
Median: The “middle” value in a sorted list of numbers is known as the median.
When we have a set of numbers, we have to arrange the data in either ascending order or descending order and find the middle number and that middle number is the median. In case of an even number of observations, there will be two middle terms. And we take an average of two middle terms to find the median.
Now, we will find the median of the given data.
Number of cars sold in each month= \[25,15,22,19,16,13,19,25,26,27,28,29\]
Arranging the data in ascending order, we get,
\[13,15,16,19,19,22,25,25,26,27,28,29\]
As there are total \[12\] (even) observations, there are two middle terms.
Two middle terms are \[22\] and \[25\]
Median is the average of two middle values.
Therefore, Median\[
  \left( M \right) = \dfrac{{22 + 25}}{2} \\
   = 23.5 \\
 \]
Hence the option E. \[23.5\] is the correct answer.

Note: Median is used to determine an approximate average of the data set. It is not to be confused with the actual meaning. In other words, Median value separates the higher half of the data values from the lower half of the data. If there are an odd number of observations, take the middle value as median directly.